{"id":36382,"date":"2017-01-04T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T17:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=36382"},"modified":"2017-01-04T12:04:13","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T17:04:13","slug":"bad-and-wrong-music-lessons-key-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=36382","title":{"rendered":"Bad and Wrong Music Lessons: Key Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am really enjoying Studio One<\/a>. It’s become my go-to DAW. That’s pretty impressive. I have hundreds of hours of experience and muscle memory dedicated to MAGIX Music Maker<\/a>. The fact that Studio One was able to win me over in about a week says a lot about how easy it was to learn. <\/p>\n

I’m still using the free version, but I’m definitely getting the mid-tier version once we recover from the holidays. A couple of years ago I was wary of spending money on fancy tools before I had the skill to make proper use of them, but the time is right. I’ve long since ditched the automated tools and prefab loops that MAGIX has to offer. These days I insist on doing everything myself. <\/p>\n

At the same time, I’ve felt like I’ve been stuck in a rut. All of my stuff is sounding the same. And even within a single song, it starts to get a bit monotonous by the end. My tracks usually end after four minutes not because I’m out of ideas, but because it doesn’t matter if I throw in a new melody, new drum riff, or a different instrument. The added variation doesn’t help fix the underlying problem that the song kind of feels like it’s spinning its wheels. <\/p>\n

A few days ago I got an encouraging email from a fan who offered me some advice…<\/p>\n

The Studio One interface. It's not easy, but it's easier than it looks.<\/div>
The Studio One interface. It's not easy, but it's easier than it looks.<\/div><\/p>\n

They suggested I needed to experiment with key changes.<\/p>\n

See, all of my music is in the key of A minorI often throw in a couple of chords from C major, which uses the same notes.<\/span>. I used A minor because it’s easy. When I’m mapping out notes, I just have to stick to the white keys on the piano and ignore the black ones. It’s not like one key is objectively better than another. F minor isn’t fundamentally more interesting than A minor. It’s true that sometimes a particular key will lend itself to a certain mood or style better than another. A minor is overwhelmingly the most popular key for the genre of music I’m working in. It’s got the right mood, it’s popular, and it’s easy. So why change?<\/p>\n

What I was overlooking is that it’s not so much about choosing a different key to write the song in, it’s about changing key within a given song. The key change is what shifts the mood and adds texture. It’s what keeps a song from getting old. You can start a song in one key, then shift to another. Once that settles in you can shift to yet another, or go back to the original key. <\/p>\n

So I need to let go of A minor. I don’t just need to get comfortable working in another key, I also have to learn how to transition from one key to another without making it sound like a cat walking on a piano.<\/p>\n

If you were a musical expert \/ genius like me, you would recognize the following object as a trombone:<\/p>\n

CDEFGABCDEFGABCDEFGAB<\/div>
CDEFGABCDEFGABCDEFGAB<\/div><\/p>\n

(Just kidding. Obviously<\/em> it’s a contrabassoon.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, if you want to play one of these gizmos in the key of A minor, you’d need to stick to these buttons:<\/p>\n

The green keys are safe. Red keys are lava.<\/div>
The green keys are safe. Red keys are lava.<\/div><\/p>\n

If you’re playing something in A minor, then hitting one of those red notes is going to sound really out of placeThere are exceptions. Because with music, there are ALWAYS exceptions.<\/span>. <\/p>\n

But if you wanted to play something in B minor, you’d have to use these buttons instead:<\/p>\n

Now these red keys are lava. Try to keep up.<\/div>
Now these red keys are lava. Try to keep up.<\/div><\/p>\n

The astute among you might notice there’s a bit of overlap between these two. They have a few keys in common. Specifically…<\/p>\n

I have de gift of gab.<\/div>
I have de gift of gab.<\/div><\/p>\n

We can use these notes in either A minor OR b minor, which means we could use these notes to transition between the two. If we’re lucky, we can construct a chord out of these notes.<\/p>\n

And we can! If you mash E+G+B, you get an E minor chord, which works in both the A minor scale and B minor scale. If we’re in more of an upbeat mood, we could use G+B+D to play a G major chord.<\/p>\n

It’s not as easy as just slamming out an E minor chord and you can magically shift to the new scale. The listener is probably “used to” the old key. You’ve probably been repeating a pattern of chords, and they’re expecting that pattern to continue. You might expect you can play these three chords in order:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. One chord that works in the old scale.\n
  2. Another chord that works in either scale.\n
  3. A third chord that works only in the new scale.\n<\/ol>\n

    But it turns out it’s not quite that simple. In isolation, #1 and #2 sound okay together. And #2 and #3 sound okay together. But if you play all three in a row the listener might still wince when you hit that #3. You need to wean them off the old scale by breaking up the pattern they’re used to. You can do this brute-force style and just stop the song for a second. Or you can fill the transition with a bunch of effects and sound samples and bending pitches to destroy any expectations. These are both valid techniques. (Particularly in electronic dance music.)<\/p>\n

    But this is also sort of cheating if your goal is to really understand how music works. <\/p>\n

    I haven’t found any solid advice on how to do this. We’re in one of those wishy-washy areas of music theory where the answer to every question is “It depends”.<\/p>\n

    The piano roll (where you map out notes) in Studio One. I've set it to highlight the notes in the B minor scale.<\/div>
    The piano roll (where you map out notes) in Studio One. I've set it to highlight the notes in the B minor scale.<\/div><\/p>\n

    Anyway, my goal now is to build some key changes into a song and see if I can figure it out. Which means I need to familiarize myself with a few different scales. I suppose a real musician might have every possible musical scale memorized, but posers like me need a little help. If I was still using MAGIX, this would be a monumental pain in the ass. I’d have to keep Alt-Tabbing to another window to refresh my memoryOr sit there mentally counting keys.<\/span>. But Studio One has this feature where it will helpfully highlight the notes that belong in your scale. If you’re feeling lazy, you can even have it snap things into your scale so you don’t have to do any laborious mouse-aiming.<\/p>\n

    Above, I showed that A minor and B minor have a lot of notes in common. This is obviously not always the case. B minor and F minor have only ONE note in common – G. Not an entire chord mind you, just a single note. My suggestion for transitioning from B minor and F minor is to just start hammering on the G note, all by itself, over and over, until the listener has lost all concept of music and is willing to accept basically anything that’s not G. <\/p>\n

    At this point the music nerds (watch out for those guys, they will confuse you) will jump in and insist that everyone should look at THE CIRCLE OF FIFTHS, a wheel-within-a-wheel diagram that – despite having “fifths” in the name, actually has 12 points which are numbered with letters, which are all out of order. They will insist they’re showing you this thing to help you, but in truth they’ve discovered the raw, nigh-universal sex appeal that comes with being a musician and they’re just trying to throw you off because they don’t want the competition.<\/p>\n

    Well, here it is anyway:<\/p>\n

    Remember: Go down by fourths to go counter-clockwise and up by fifths to go clockwise. Yes, there's a good reason for this. No, it's probably not worth an hour of jargon and math to find out.<\/div>
    Remember: Go down by fourths to go counter-clockwise and up by fifths to go clockwise. Yes, there's a good reason for this. No, it's probably not worth an hour of jargon and math to find out.<\/div><\/p>\n

    Just focusing on the inner ring (minor keys) for now: You can see A minor and B minor are fairly close, which is why they have so many notes in common. B minor is directly opposite F minor, which makes them basically toothpaste-and-orange juice in terms of how well they compliment each other. <\/p>\n

    So that’s all the theory. Now to apply it:<\/p>\n

    I decided to break from my usual electronic dance music. EDM is a little repetitive by design, which probably makes transitions easier. (Earlier I jokingly suggested hammering on a lone G for several seconds, but in EDM you can sort of get away with those kind of shenanigans.) Also you’ve got drums, drops, wooshing sounds, fade-outs, audio samples, and other tomfoolery that can be used to distract the listener while you shift into another key. My goal here is to make one song that does several key changes. I want something that’s slow and focused on the music, not something fast that’s just sugar coating on a throbbing drum beat.<\/p>\n

    The result…
    \n